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What technique up until now gives you the most trouble, is the most difficult one to get right, the evil technique. The one you do in class and no matter what you did the result was allways an utter catastrophe and a world of frustration. What did you over come that hurdle, to go from catastrophe to little or compete success?

The most difficult technique of all time in aikido is shomenuchi ikkyo ura when the attacker delivers fast, strong attack and is not cooperating much. The reason is, his elbow is pointing down. It is quite a work to turn is up and lock down uke without considerable effort ....

I plain suck at koshinage, any attack. First, I can never manage to disrupt uke's balance and focus enough to enter safely, and koshinage has a dangerous entry: you ARE bringing your back within reach.

Against our dojo's resident super-uke, who has honest, committed attacks but doesn't give up his balance for anyone, my koshinage attempts almost always end up with him simply dropping his weight and grounding me, turning the whole technique into some judo-levering exercise, or else actively backmounting me and submitting me if he feels mischievous. In either case, his feedback has always been that he had enough time and presence of mind to figure out what my intentions were: in other words, I have no kuzushi. I need to really distract the crap out of him before attempting the technique.

Another problem: even if I do manage to mentally unbalance uke, the technique STILL feels like some awkward judo throw involving leverage. The best koshinage I've ever taken ukemi for, and the kind of koshinage i aspire to, felt more like I was being extended up (his atemi was always either an uppercut or an elbow strike to the chin) and then tripped over nage's body: there was no loading up of my weight and dropping me, no levering me up like a sack of potatos, no real action that I could feel and respond to. I don't think I even touched nage's back.

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train as if the tengu will never visit, execute as if they already have

I hate doing koshinage in practise too! It's the stopping in the middle that ruins it for me. "Load them up" is how I've almost always heard it taught; I assumed it was supposed to be for safety (? although I've known two people to have broken their foot taking ukemi for badly-performed koshinage), but it always seems much safer to me being done smoothly. And then it is, as Sy wrote, much like tripping uke with your whole body...

Yea, anything more than the basic koshinage seem unnatural to me :S Sometimes it's more tempting to do a Judo O-goshi instead

Ashi barai (think it's also called aiki-nage omote, the one where tori dives under uke's legs) is also a bit confusing. It's quite tempting to bash the body into someone's knee.. and if it fails tori ends up in quite an awkward position.

I must admit I can so relate to the topic, that technique from hell that should be moved up to be practiced only amongst the very high dan-ranks. Koshi nage is this for me. I do understand it's beauty when performed by someone who can do it, but as for myself - alas, I am unable. I, like others apparently, suck at koshi nage.

At present I try to train my legs a little bit more, but realize that the correct movement would bring uke whirling around me without even loading my leg muscles that much. Oh, happy day, but I fear some time off in the future.

I like koshinage very much. There is a lot of contact with attacker, so it is quite easy to unbalance him and maintain the control of his body until he hits the ground.
Also koshinage teaches you to use whole your body at once to do a technique, not only shoulders or legs.

Szczepan, I always viewed Ikkyo as a technique where the blend is ideally done with the upward motion of the strike rather than the downward, so contact is made at the apex of the arm lift. In that situaion I've found more energy and force from uke makes ura the better option. Sounds to me you're looking to apply it a little later in the piece as the arm is swinging down. IMO that's one of those situations which in practice you can spend alot of time figuring out how to move the elbow to the right position etc (which is a interesting mental exercise) but in reality the situation has probably moved on to kote gaeshi, irimi nage etc.

I remember reading once a quote from I think Ueshiba saying every technique is a variation of ikkyo. Took me a while to process it but what I came up with is ikkyo is first cab off the rank but there is a limited window of opportunity. So you enter looking for ikkyo, if you're a little late it's time to bring in the other stuff.

Helped me anyway.

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"

Thanks very much for your response; it points in a different direction than I was thinking, and I look forward to the opportunity to play around with the depth of entry.

I currently approach the problem pretty much the way Michael describes, FWI(conceivably may be)W. (Since this isn't something I arrived at myself, it may be worth more).

If I can elaborate a bit:

Done the way Michael describes, I find shomen uchi ikkyo illustrates (among other things) the principle of ma ai as involving timing as well as spacing, and the relation between the two.

If, for purposes of isolating this bit, one reduces the space between nage and uke to the point where nage starts out within striking distance, but maintain the same timing, nage's arm goes up at the same time or just behind nage's, and makes contact during the upswing (as sometimes happens with suwari waza).

When nage moves back a step, in theory the timing shouldn't change, even though nage now must close the gap in order to strike.

If nage and uke then move apart to the point where several steps by nage and uke are needed to close the distance, again the basic time relationship between uke's strike and nage's response shouldn't change (in theory, but I find it harder because the process of closing this multi-step distance requires it's own understanding, and I'm very much still working on that).

The problem I often find I have with shomen techniques happens when I am trying to let nage's blow pass by, but nage's elbow is turned out, as I have a harder time blending with that strike. (Quite often happens with newer folk, who haven't been trained to "take ukemi," but is valuable to point out the limiting assumptions behind iterations of a technique in which the strike is "clean.")

Szczepan, I always viewed Ikkyo as a technique where the blend is ideally done with the upward motion of the strike rather than the downward, so contact is made at the apex of the arm lift. In that situaion I've found more energy and force from uke makes ura the better option. Sounds to me you're looking to apply it a little later in the piece as the arm is swinging down. IMO that's one of those situations which in practice you can spend alot of time figuring out how to move the elbow to the right position etc (which is a interesting mental exercise) but in reality the situation has probably moved on to kote gaeshi, irimi nage etc.

I remember reading once a quote from I think Ueshiba saying every technique is a variation of ikkyo. Took me a while to process it but what I came up with is ikkyo is first cab off the rank but there is a limited window of opportunity. So you enter looking for ikkyo, if you're a little late it's time to bring in the other stuff.

Helped me anyway.

Naturealy we may use many different timings when doing ikkyo.When you use early timing, where ukes arm is still swinging up, you have to turn his elbow up anyway. The difficulty here is not to cross the line of attack - it will create omote version of technique (which is much easier to do), or kind of strange mix omote-ura(which will be incorrect). What I observed, when uke doesn't know what to do, he will maintain his elbow down in any moment of attack (swing up or down) and me as nage, I have to turn his elbow while trying to unbalance him - in our case ura version - to his third point behind his back.
If I force a bit too much when trying to turn his elbow, he will move his feet and adjust position, so my whole initial work to enter behind his back and unbalance him become useless.Hence the difficulty.

A good example of ikkyo ura will be a way of Yamaguchi sensei, but his uke is doing a work for him by turning his elbow by himself. But I'm not interested in uke that is trained as Pavlov dogs.

The problem I often find I have with shomen techniques happens when I am trying to let nage's blow pass by, but nage's elbow is turned out, as I have a harder time blending with that strike. (Quite often happens with newer folk, who haven't been trained to "take ukemi," but is valuable to point out the limiting assumptions behind iterations of a technique in which the strike is "clean.")

Respectfully,

DH

If uke elbow is turned out (if I understand well your description, his hand, elbow and shoulder are not on the same line ?) it is in fact more easier - uke elbow is already partially turned up. Then deep entry behind him and then kesa cut while you doing tenkan should help.

All the techniques are pretty much equal. For me it is the different levels of understanding each technique.

Here are a couple that dont really flow:
Uchikaiten Nage - if uke doesnt know how to fall/roll, then it looks like you are shoving them in the ground. Its easier just to do Uchikaiten Sankyo and get a real result that you feel you did something with.

Shihonage...used to like it, but for some reason Im getting stuck in the flow. Im missing some basic points to it and its becoming over complicated now.

For me there's a lot.. ('cause I'm still learnin')
But the one that really gets me is... Randori not sure which one but ya, being the uke for that technique is my nightmare!!

Domo,
Tara

Quote:

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.